GIS Data & Metadata

This Open-File Report contains ready-to-use GIS data that was
prepared using ESRI's ArcView, ArcGIS and ArcInfo. Data pertaining to this report
can be view directly off this CD-ROM by opening the ArcView project "FGB_OFR.apr"
located in the directory "Data." (note: If
you do not have ArcView, you will need the FREE GIS browser ArcExplorer which
may be downloaded from ESRI at www.esri.com).
Otherwise, the individual datasets are available for download, to be used with
you own GIS mapping software.

The directory "Data" of this CD-ROM contains
an ArcView project file called FGB_OFR.apr which was created on a Windows2000
system using ArcView 3.2a. When using the CD, either double-click on the filename
to launch ArcView, or open ArcView and load the project (see README
for software requirements). The project file has been modified to reflect relative
pathnames to files, so it should work from the CD-ROM drive, regardless of the
assigned drive letter. However, this project files contains grids and requires
the user have the Spatial Analyst extension to open the project. For those users
who have ArcView, but not Spatial Analyst, open the ArcView project file in
the data directory of the CD-ROM entitled FGB_nosa.apr. This ArcView project
does not contain any of the gridded surfaces. Those grids can be loaded as images,
but because the grids are floating point grids the default colormap loaded is
grayscale which does not reveal many of the details of the surfaces.

Hotlinks:
These ArcView projects contain hotlinks which, when run off the CD-ROM,
will link sediment sample locations to a pop-up photo of the sediment grab sample.
These hotlinks will work in both the Spatial Analyst and Non-Spatial Analyst
versions of the project but will only work when running the project off the
CD-ROM. Hotlinking is activated by making the sediment point shapefile the active
theme, selecting the hotlink button (left) from the view toolbar and clicking
on a sample in view "2. Bottom Sample Locations & Photos."

For the hotlinks to work with these ArcView projects, the user must supply information regarding the data location. When the ArcView project is first opened, a window will prompt the user to enter the location ArcView project file (the root directory, i.e. "d:/data/"). If the file is read from the CD-ROM, then the drive letter of the CD-ROM is what needs to be filled in. If the whole contents of the CD-ROM are copied to the hard disk, then this directory information needs to be entered at the prompt. This procedure only works of the directory structure of the CD-ROM is kept in tact when moved to the hard disk.

The tables below represent the GIS data available for download
pertaining to USGS Open-File Report 03-002. The first column contains a description
of the dataset as well as a link to the metadata file and a browse graphic of
the data. The second column contains a .zip file for each data file. To use
these data with your own GIS mapping software you will need to unzip each of
these files to a local data directory using an unzipping program such as WinZip
(a trial version can be downloaded from WinZip at http://www.winzip.com/download.htm).
Once unzipped, shapefiles should be ready to use with ESRI GIS mapping programs.
Note that grids from this Open-File Report are made available here as zipped
ascii files and must be unzipped and then converted to grids using ArcToolbox,
ArcInfo, ArcView or other GIS software. ArcGIS layer (.lyr) files are included
within most of the zipped data files (.zip). Because layer files simply link
a legend to a data source, you may need to update the links ("set data
source") within the layer file and set it to where you have placed the
data on your own system. In addition, the zipped data files ferltxtr.shp,
caco3.shp, ef_interp.shp and wf_interp.shp also include
ArcView legend files (.avl) which were created using ArcView 3.2a.

ef_interp
- Sea-floor bottom type interpretation of the East Flower Garden Bank
portion of the Flower Garden Banks NMS based on sediment samples and the
multibeam backscatter and bathymetry. (Polygon Shapefile)

wf_interp
- Sea-floor bottom type interpretation of the West Flower Garden Bank
portion of the Flower Garden Banks NMS based on sediment samples and the
multibeam backscatter and bathymetry. (Polygon Shapefile)